View full sizeChris Killian | Special to the Kalamazoo GazetteOne last smoke: Trevor Hamblin, of Kalamazoo, lights a cigarette Friday night at the Green Top Tavern, just hours before the state's smoking ban took effect. KALAMAZOO— If you’re a smoker and you were out on the town Friday night, Chris Miller might have summed up things quite well.

“It feels like New Year’s Eve,” Miller said, after lighting up a Camel cigarette at the Green Top Tavern in downtown Kalamazoo.

In the minutes running up to closing time at the bar, established in 1924 and one of the city’s oldest watering holes, smoking patrons lit up for the last time as the state’s smoking ban was ushered in.

Lee Cagle, a bartender at the Green Top for 10 years, doesn’t smoke. But to say he is against the law might be an understatement.

“I think it’s bull ... It’s like Big Brother telling us what to do again,” he said.

Cagle’s wife, Sandy, has been behind the bar for 30 years. Also not a fan of the law, she is worried about a decline in business. Just before the bar’s 1 a.m. closing time, she handed out some of the bar’s ashtrays to customers.

“Businesses shouldn’t be told what they can do and what they can’t do,” she said. “If someone goes outside to smoke, they’re not in here giving us business.”

At the Green Top, Harvey’s on the Mall and several other downtown bars on Saturday night, smokers congregated just outside the front doors.

Other formerly smoker-friendly establishments were taking the law as a breath of fresh air.

The Fourth Coast Café, long known as one of the smokiest establishments in the city, closed down for two days for intense cleaning and remodeling before opening back up Saturday morning.

The dull hum of the three Smokeeter air purifiers that ran around the clock was gone, along with the stacks of heavy glass ashtrays and near-constant haze of smoke that hung in the air.

When the café opened-up, patrons were greeted by new bathroom fixtures, additional electrical outlets for laptops and more counterspace.

And fresh air.

“We’re breaking that stigma of being a smoky den,” said Dana Owens, a manager at the café.

Getting the smoke smell out of the establishment was no easy task. The wooden walls were washed twice with Murphy’s Oil Soap, the front counters were replaced and the interior brick walls were blasted with an industrial strength bleach solution, Owens said.

He said that business has been down a little over the past few days, with some regulars, “especially the chain smokers,” opening the front door, then turning around and leaving.

Owens is expecting, however, that non-smokers who stayed away from the café for years will now flock to it.

“So far, so good,” he said Sunday morning. “I think we’ll have enough new business to compensate for those who don’t come back. We were always more than just a place to smoke, and I hope people come down, meet their neighbors, and see what we’re all about.”